Shared meal plan sees more popularity

Since the introduction of the four-year residential college system in 2007, the popularity of shared meal plans has grown year by year. Shared meal plans allow students to benefit from a spacious residential college room while maintaining the full social experience of an eating club.

These shared meal plans require upperclassmen to purchase the 95-meal plan in the residential college while also signing a dining and social contract with their club.

University Executive Vice President Mark Burstein, who was one of the primary negotiators between the University and the Interclub Council as the two parties prepared for the launch of the four-year college system in 2006, said that this increased interest in shared meal plans is “very good news.”

Burstein said he is satisfied with the progress of the shared- meal-plan initiative.

“One of the great things about the shared meal plan program is that it has allowed students to be members of both an eating club and a residential college, and actually the number of students who have been taking shared meal plans has been higher than what we originally expected,” Burstein said.

He estimated that over 150 students currently have shared meal plans, a significant increase from 89 in 2007, the four-year residential college system’s inaugural year. Students in sign-in clubs hold nearly 80 percent of all shared meal plans, Burstein said.

The increase may be partly due to the lowered cost of shared meal plans to the clubs. The fee that each club pays the University for each shared meal plan decreased to $600 in 2009 from $1,000 in 2008. Since 2009, the fee has increased only slightly.

Colonial Club offers 50 shared meal plans, the most on the Street. Until this year, Colonial was the only club to offer as few as nine meals a week as part of its shared meal plan. Colonial president Roland Hwang ’13 explained, “We got rid of the shared nine-meal plans, which we kept only for the RCAs just to match all the other eating clubs on the Street.” Colonial now offers only the more standard plans of 14 or 19 meals a week at the club. Hwang believes dropping this meal option did not significantly affect sign-in numbers.

Colonial member Sungwoo Chon ’13 said that he had no difficulty obtaining a shared meal plan, though members of some clubs have complained about the lack of availability of the plans.

“Because my draw time for a residential college was significantly better than for upperclass, I thought I might as well get a better room, and I had to get a shared meal plan with both,” Chon said.

He also noted that the price for his plan was the same as a full Colonial meal plan, an advantage he said he had not realized until this semester.

According to a source within the club, Charter Club only offered around 10 shared meal plans this year. Charter decreased the number of shared meal plans offered from 30 to 17 in 2008 when the University asked all of the eating clubs to pay the same $1,000 fee for each shared meal plan. President Rodrigo Menezes ’13 said he did not know the number of students in Charter on a shared meal plan.

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Previously, Charter had been paying significantly less to the University than the other clubs.

Cap & Gown Club president Alec Egan ’13 noted that for the most part, club members who have shared meal plans are RCAs.

“The shared meal plan works really well as an option for some Cap members, especially our RCAs, but the core of our club is in the full-time members,” Egan said.

According to previous coverage by The Daily Princetonian, Ivy Club, which is traditionally the club with the fewest shared meal plans, offered just one shared meal plan, a decrease from previous years when it has offered three or four. Tiger Inn and the University Cottage Club have previously offered around six shared meal plans. In 2009, Tower Club offered just four. The presidents of Ivy, TI and Tower said that they were not aware of the current number of members on shared meal plans. Rory Wilsey ’12, the president of Cottage, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Burstein said that he and the administration are open to further collaboration between the colleges and the Street.

“We continue to be in conversations with the [Graduate Interclub Council] and the ICC to improve collaboration between the University and the clubs,” Burstein said. “There are always opportunities to do that, and we continue to look for those.”